Spring Cleaning
by adorable pragmatism
Summary: Robin never threw any of it away. The articles, the notes, the mask. But it's the season for a fresh start, he hasn't seen any hint of Slade in over a year, and the waste-basket is only half-full…


A/N: Why am I not: A) studying for exams or B) working on my other story?

Studying sucks. Writer's block sucks. Thought I'd get this story off my chest. ((Don't own TT and stuff yeah))

I always thought it was interesting how Robin's bedroom was uber tidy and his study/work room was a total mess. I think it shows the contrast between his two prevalent character traits: responsible and ultra-mega-Batman-broody. Oh, Robbie. You funny boy, you.

* * *

Robin started with his study. His bedroom didn't need it, since he always kept it impeccably neat. No junk lying on the floor or under the bed, all his uniforms hung in a row in his closet, bed made first thing every morning. Clean enough to make Alfred proud.

While his bedroom was a shining example of every good habit he learned from Alfred, his study suffered the effects of every bad habit he picked up from Bruce.

It was dark. His study was one of the few rooms in the Tower without windows. He flicked the light switch on, and with the weak light the room was still dark. Dark like a cave, which made the other Titans a bit worried, a bit concerned.

When he was faced with a tough case and marched straight to his study, he often heard his friends wonder aloud. _Why? Why did Robin shut himself in that cave of a room?_

Robin would always wait until the door was closed before he allowed himself a small smile and tried (and never succeeded) to convince himself that the heavy feeling in his chest wasn't homesickness. Because it _was_ a cave. It was exactly what the Batcave would look like if Bruce didn't have an ever-patient butler picking up after him.

The walls drowned in layers and layers of newspaper clippings. The top layer was mostly about Red X (who was still at large), the Hive Five (who recently broke out of jail and were on a crime spree) and that white shapeshifting monster (which had yet to be captured—it was proving to be a problem).

Not so long ago, it was solely Slade.

The articles weren't all about criminals and monsters, not anymore. One wall was unofficially dedicated to the Titans—his team and the other branches. Their victories, their accomplishments. It started with a small clipping here or there… At last count, he had collected over a hundred. Looking at that wall made him feel a small, happy glow of pride.

Dealing with his accumulated 'wallpaper' would be a big task, so first he focused on the desk. He picked through old notes and scribbles on scraps of paper, most of which were tossed when he couldn't figure out what the heck was written on them. His handwriting could get really jumbled around dawn.

Only when the desk was clean—with the tools, notepads, and pens neatly arranged—and ready to be made a mess of again within a day or two did he turn his attention to the years of Teen Titans history archived all around him.

He took the newspaper articles down one-by-one, sorting them into piles of those to throw away or those to put back up, and those to keep got organized into subcategories based on subject. Some were pinned to the walls, some taped, and some were held on by old bubblegum that was so rock-hard that he had to chip it away with a birdarang.

It was like going backwards through time. The papers got yellower, crisper, and older as he went. Articles about the Brotherhood of Evil made up the second layer.

Underneath those were clippings about the fires around the old library, notes about Trigon and the Mark of Scath, and papers with symbols that he didn't truly understand but had tried to find a connection between because it meant saving Raven…

Next was the HIVE Academy, Brother Blood, and the formation of Titans East. Back then Robin had been reeling from the appearance of the new Red X and the effects of the hallucinogenic dust, so he didn't have quite as many clippings for that period of time. Taking down Blood had been Cyborg's mission.

And then he started uncovering newspaper articles with Slade's name in them. The Teen Titans reclaiming Jump City from Slade (after a large earthquake of unknown cause), Slade taking over the city with his robots and a girl with strange powers, the absence of the Teen Titans. Kind of like history in reverse, that he documented on his walls after the events as he sifted through the piles of newspapers from his city and others and tried to understand how he could have let it happen_._

Robin hadn't been able to see the signs. So instead he had forced himself to look at the consequences and vowed to be less blind in the future, not as careless with his words. Things could have gone so much differently… but they didn't. The past was the past, and the past was written all over the walls of his room.

Giant mechanical worms, Titans Tower almost sinking into the water, the seizing of a diamond mine by a certain criminal mastermind…

Destruction of the sign atop the Wayne Industries building…

And then he was back to the beginning. The forest fire that came so close to the city, that Thunder and Lightning were coerced by Slade into starting. The jail breaks. Plasmus and Cinderblock on the loose. The startling transformation of Titans Tower, after the HIVE kids attacked the heroes on Slade's orders.

Those were the articles Robin knew best. The ones he stayed up all night trying to glean a revelation from. The ones that had frustrated him when he couldn't and pushed him so close to that line…

Those were the articles Robin threw out indiscriminately. He paced and stalled and remembered but when it came down to it he told himself that he could throw out every single clipping and it wouldn't matter, because he had all of them backed up electronically if he ever needed to look back. The only reason to keep any of them was if he _wanted _to, and he didn't want to keep those. So he threw them out.

Those were the only articles Robin fished out of the trash can afterwards. He pinned the ones he wanted to keep on the walls in organized formations, covering up the unevenly-faded walls that had once been pure black, and then chastised himself for picking up that one terrible habit of Bruce's—that habit of keeping things—as he grabbed the old, crackling Slade articles from the trash can.

It wasn't like throwing them away would be able to make Robin forget. It wasn't like Robin would want to forget. He _had_ learned a thing or two from Slade, after all—lessons that were the exact opposite of what Slade tried to teach him.

He just couldn't toss them, but he didn't know what to do with them, either. There wasn't any room on the walls, between the Titans and the Brotherhood and Trigon and the HIVE and Terra… Some of those would get thrown away in the future and replaced with new ones as he kept moving forward, but for now there was no place for the oldest Slade articles.

An idea came to him.

Five minutes later, Robin was kneeling in the basement, looking down at a box of evidence that he pried loose from the stacks. He hesitated before he pulled the lid off, and when he did muster up the courage to do it he found himself holding his breath until the dust settled, which was silly because they made sure to neutralize the chemical in the mask after that incident. Cyborg had offered to incinerate the mask, but Robin maintained that it was an important piece of evidence. And kept it.

As Robin stuck the articles in the box, he tried to avoid looking at the mask's empty eye, except he couldn't. He picked up the smooth metal plate and remembered how close he had once been to finding out who hid behind it. If only it had been a little bit less dark…

There was an excited rush of air from behind him as Starfire zoomed down from the door, ignoring the staircase. "Robin, there you are! I was wondering if you would wish to go to the…" She saw him holding the mask, and her face fell. "Oh. You are busy. I shall—" She was turning away, about to leave him alone.

Robin placed the mask back in the box. "No, Star. It's fine. What were you saying?"

"There is to be a festival of the street! With music and a parade and the cotton candy and many other glorious customs."

"Sounds like fun."

"So you wish to attend… with me?"

He smiled. "Of course. Do you even have to ask?"

Starfire laughed and Robin happily let her drag him out of the basement because, after everything he had looked back on today, it was a nice change to look _forward_.


End file.
